And finally...

After four years, I have come to end of the roll of admissions tickets picked up in Margate.  From them I have produced four collections of my own small admissions at a rate of one volume per year.

They'll be making their debut at the inaugural Frome Small Publishers Fair on 2nd July, do pop in and say hello if you are local.  All copies of the previous editions have now sold out after some were whisked off to America - I wonder if the admissions still rang true over there?


Two slightly bigger admissions that need to be made in relation to the new book:

The chaos of moving house during the year meant a change of venue and lack of routine in making, which has meant that though the tickets are all from the last quarter of the roll I didn't follow the same numbering sequence of tickets and copies in this fourth series - oops.

As I got closer to the very centre of the roll the tickets became more tightly curled, and in the process of encouraging them to straighten out some took advantage of their perforations to detach themselves  from their friends.  Three copies therefore future a 'mend' which I decided to highlight rather than hide.

A Fourth and Final Series of Small Admissions

Rubber stamp printing onto paper tickets with card end covers 

53 x 34mm

edition of 25

£4

Coupon book

With only a week to go until the Artists' Bookmarket at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, I've managed to squeeze in another tiny book - an easy one to fit in the hand baggage thankfully.

Coupon book

Pamphlet bound 2 page book with original ticket covers and rubber stamp printing

52 x 30mm

edition of 20

£4

Next leg

First books of 2015 completed, the England leg of the Grand Tour series I've been putting together.  In contrast to the previous France and Germany editions, the tickets used for the covers of these are some London transport ones from the 1960's.  This was because I wanted some that had come to me from someone else's collection, as the others had, rather than collecting any deliberately.  The size and used quality of them works well with the torn paper pages inside.  I really like that each of these books is unique as the text and image combinations vary and cannot be repeated.

So the set so far looks like this, only Italy to add if the chance arises (ie I get any tickets!).

As before, I'll keep one copy and give one to the person who donated the tickets, so that leaves 3 to take to my next book fair, Artists' Bookmarket at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh 21-22 February.

Grand Tour

A couple of weeks ago I took part in the Counter Plymouth Artists' Book Fair.  Needless to say the days leading up to it were a scramble of activity putting together some new books.   In particular I was pleased to finally realise a book I had planned and printed during my MA, but which had turned into a set of prints for the final show.  Having located the leftover printing, and the tickets that were the catalyst, the result is a set of books called Grand Tour - so far France and Germany are complete, England is on the way, and Italy is awaiting a donation of used train tickets from that country....if anyone has some tucked away.

As usual, to achieve a simple yet satisfying end result a lot of calculations were needed on the obligatory scrap of paper.  And the best bit of the whole process?  Getting to use the ex-GPO stamp to number the edition - thanks Jenny!

2 small books

To get making momentum going again I recently completed 2 small books that have been in the back of my mind for a long time.  Both have originated from pre-printed materials.

The first was as a result of receiving some beautiful seed packets - thank you Mr Fowler!  They were so good just as they were I wavered for a long time considering how best to utilise them in a book, but finally their intrinsic packet qualities won out and I decided to keep them in their intended form and play around with words instead.

The finished book is a collection of 4 seed packets tied roughly with garden string.  Each is rubber stamped with the details of a different seed type: Hope, Despair, Change and Success, including when to harvest and what to plant with.

Seeds

Rubber stamp printing onto paper seed packets, bound with garden string 

70 x 100mm

edition of 5

£8

The second book is a follow up to a book I made last year A Series of Small Admissions.  As time has passed I have considered the pile of unused tickets and kept a note of fleeting thoughts and realisations that fitted the criteria for this concept 'A concertina book of tickets, each revealing a small personal admission on the reverse, in proportion with the scale and transient nature of the ticket'.  The hardest thing has been not to include or admit to anything too big!

A Second Series of Small Admissions

Rubber stamp printing onto paper tickets with card end covers 

53 x 34mm

edition of 25

£4

Both of these new titles will be available at Plymouth Artists' Book Fair, or by contacting me (email address on side menu).

On show

This week I completed and sent off a few of my ticket books for the exhibition Home from Home, curated by Louise Atkinson.  Around the theme of home and featuring work from over 80 artists, the show runs alongside the 14th Leeds International Artists Book Fair and will be installed at 153 Woodhouse Lane, Leeds from 11 - 18th March 2011.

Take a look at the exhibition blog for more details.

Ticket books and 'home ephemera' in bowl

Ticket books

For the first abc (artists' book club) meeting of the year I put together some book prototypes on my ticket theme so that I could get some feedback before launching into production mode.

The first is a folded structure, from pieces of train timetables, with a rubber stamp railway symbol tracking a journey through.  It aims to keep the integrity and aesthetics of the original ticket and folds up to the same size with a greyboard back.  The ticket destinations are not specific to me so the idea is to evoke the experience of a journey, as well as creating a tactile object.

The second book was a play on the VOID tickets that I collected from my weekly commute last semester.  The concept was to make a cut out train silhouette, and I wanted to enhance this by making each carriage line up so that opened at any point you would get the clear cut shapes of the train.  The prototype was hand cut and made from sheets of joined paper to get the required length.  After completion I added black card to the inside end pages to give a more defined outline to the engine cars.  I intend to experiment with laser cutting this design from a single sheet of paper, and compare it to the hand cut version before deciding which to use.  I envisage this will be an open edition of books that I will add to as I acquire more tickets.

Just the ticket

New year = new projects and at the start of January I decided to take the plunge and create some works using the collection of 1960's train tickets that I acquired when the picture library at my old job was disbanded.  I have been saving them as I love them as objects and have the fear of wasting the opportunity by not using them in the *best* way, but this is the right time to exploit those qualities that I like.